“For every man,
on every occasion, can find in the Psalms
that which fits his needs, which he feels to be appropriate as if they
had been set there just for his sake…" -Martin
Luther

By
Monk Preston

(Co-Founder
and President, The Prayer Foundation)

“...the Psalms
have a unique place in the Bible because most of the Scripture speaks to
us, while the Psalms speak for us.”-Athanasius of Alexandria

The spiritual
disciplines are not ends in themselves...

It has been wisely
said that one is always a beginner in prayer, no matter how many decades
one has been praying. However, keeping that in mind as a spiritual
truism, it is also our cherished hope to learn, experience, and by the
grace of God progress somehow in this most important area of our walk
with God.

The spiritual
disciplines are certainly not to be viewed as ends in
themselves---if we are reading the Bible, praying and fasting to become "more
spiritual", and when interrupted, react in anger or impatience
to our spouse or children, we have obviously missed the point, and are
no longer, moment by moment, "walking in the
Spirit".

Faith, hope,
love, "and the greatest of these is love"."But
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance..." These all come
out of, and are manifested because of...love. This is "walking
in the Spirit" and "abiding in Christ"
This is "true religion and undefiled". This is real,
authentic, lived Christianity; our calling and ministry.

...abiding in
Him, is an end in itself.

Being in communion with
God, maintaining our relationship with God, our abiding in Him, is
an end in itself. There can be no true prayer without true
communion with God. Any so-called "prayer"
that does not consist of a relationship with God is not real prayer.

I recently read an
interesting comment by George
Muller. He said that the first thing
upon awakening, he would go to prayer, but sometimes it had
taken him fifteen minutes or even half an hour to get "in the
Spirit". Then he decided to go to the Word of God first,
and to read until he was led to pray. This solved his problem.

It has long been my
personal practice upon arising to pray Psalm
5(I got the idea to so from the writings of Athanasius
of Alexandria). In the Psalms
the Word of God and prayer are already combined, so albeit
unwittingly, I have also managed to avoid that problem.

...praying for
a complete hour daily.

Now I will talk about
ways of praying for a complete hour, set aside daily.

One can simply decide to
do it, as I did when a new Christian over thirty-five years ago. In
the beginning it will often be the hardest thing you have ever done.
An hour will often seem like it is lasting for days. How can
you think of enough to say, to pray for, to fill up an entire hour?
(yes, there are also moments of ecstasy!).

You have prayed for
seemingly two hours, but if you look at the clock, a mere five
minutes has passed! (sometimes I would get out of bed to pray my "hour
of prayer" at 3:00 a.m. and twice upon doing so I realized that
I must have "dozed off", because my head suddenly
jerked up.This does, however, make the hour go by more
quickly!). "Just do it", as the Nike
slogan goes, and you will find that after a year or two (hopefully even
less!), you will have learned how to pray.

Another way is to divide
the hour up into all of the various types of prayer: Praise,
intercession, thanksgiving, petition, and so forth. Dick Eastman's
fine book "The Hour That Changes the World" has a
pie-chart doing this and covers all of the different types of prayer excellently.
But you will find that sometimes you still run out of words, have gone through all
of the entire "hour's" worth of types of prayer in the first ten
minutes, and still wind up having the same problem.

...everyone
prays differently.

The fact is, everyone
prays differently. Historically, spiritual advisors in monasteries
do not like to give too specific advice for this reason. So maybe
as a new Christian my "learn to swim by jumping in the
water" approach was all right---"one size fits
all". However, I myself actually learned how to swim by taking
lessons as a child at the YMCA. This is why the The Prayer Foundation
website has all types of prayer "techniques" and practices,
articles and book reviews posted on it. No one could possibly
practice them all, but one or more of them may be right for, and greatly
helpful to one person, while others of them will be helpful to another
person.

Let God Himself
teach you how to pray through His Word...

This is something I have
found for myself to be very beautiful and spiritually rewarding.

Let God Himself teach
you how to pray through His Word, in person (remember Mary and
Martha? Have a seat at at Christ's feet, in His
presence).

There is an entire
section of the Bible that God provided for just this purpose.
Its called the Book of Psalms, and it is not "instructional"
learning, it is "hands on" learning.

...you can't
learn how to sail from abook...

I discovered the same principle to
be true when learning how to sail. When I took
sailing classes many years ago the teacher gave us a "safety,
theory, and basics" instruction manual
to read. "Memorize it," he told us, "but
remember that you can't learn how to sail from abook...you
have to actually get out on the water in a sailboat!"

Set aside an hour per
day (or a half an hour per week, or whatever you choose).

Pray for the current
needs. This will take you about five minutes, some days perhaps as
much as ten. Take as long as you need. Pick a favorite Psalm
and start memorizing the first verse. Slowly,
meditatively---probably
over a period of weeks---it does not matter if you ever finish
memorizing this Psalm (you will, though).

...you are
praying to Him in a Biblical way used by all of the great saints in the
Bible...

God is speaking to you
through his Word and you are praying to Him in a Biblical way used by
all of the great saints in the Bible, both in the Old Testament
and in the New Testament. If you are allowing an hour a
day, you will sort of know one or two verses by the end. The next
day you will have forgotten them. Start over. It will be
easier this time and you may even get a little farther.

Eventually you will have
an entire Psalm memorized and you can now pray it. I
imagine that our Lord JesusHimself, James, Peter, John, and all of the other saints, all began
learning how to do this when they were about three years old!
Perhaps it's about time you did, too!

Sorry, you're praying too
fast! You didn't even hear the words!

This is why many modern
Christians only pray extemporaneously (you should pray
extemporaneously too, its not an either/or situation).
Though, as you have probably noticed, there are many whose "extemporaneous"
prayers often fall into the exact same repetitive phrases.

...slow down
another gear into the "meditative" mode (thinking
deeply on the Word of God, savoring it).

Slow down so that you're
hearing the words---about the same speed as if you were reading
them out loud. Your mind is now engaged on God's Word as if you were
reading it. Much better!

Now slow down another
gear into the "meditative" mode (thinking deeply on
the Word of God, savoring it). Now the words of the Psalm
have lowered from your head to your heart, and you can feel it there.
We want to "hide the Word" there, "in our
hearts". It will help later in standing against sin. Right
now it will help in getting into God's presence and sitting at Christ's
feet.

"But his
delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day
and night." -Psalm 1:2

...you will be
able to pray Psalms for the entire hour...

As time passes, and more
and more Psalms are memorized, you will eventually be able to pray
Psalms for the entire hour (or longer) without memorizing at
all. Or you may want to continue praying/meditation/memorizing.
You can also "mix and match". And by your doing
this, the Lord may guide you into a different way of spending your
personal prayer-time.

At that point just ask
the Lord what He would have you to do. That's what its all about,
anyway.

™____________________________________________________________

An Open Letter
On Praying the Psalms:

12/9/08________________________________

I am having trouble getting a feeling for the difference between praying
the Psalms,
as opposed to just reading them---(especially on occasions when
the Psalm doesn't seem to apply to my life at the time.)

Can you explain to me what the difference is/should be---in my head
or in my heart? How do I feel that I am praying them?

Thank you,

Sheri

Comment
from The Prayer Foundation ™: Usually
when a verse really is applicable to something happening in your life
(often some sort of problem) is where you will really feel that
you are praying it. Praise, thanksgiving, and repentance/asking
for forgiveness, of course, are
always applicable.

Praying (slowly)
any Psalms
that you have memorized (most people begin with Psalm
23 and Psalm 117)
will give you the "feel" for it. It is often
much easier for most ProtestantEvangelicals to pray a Psalm that they have
memorized.

Those of
us who have not come from a Protestant Denomination where
written prayers are used in Church (as in the Anglican,
Lutheran, Presbyterian
Churches) have almost a "mental block" about
tending to reject written prayers as "not really
praying". It can be very difficult for us.

This puts
us in the very strange position of rejecting prayers consisting
of Holy Scripture and given by God specifically for that
purpose, as being "no good, not really praying",
while something we just make up out of heads is "real
praying" (they're both "real praying", of
course!).

We can do both. Praying extemporaneously is necessary
and scriptural; praying the Psalms is actually praying
scripture, (God speaks to us as we speak to Him) and can be wonderful, especially (to us)
when they are memorized.

On the
other hand, I had a Professor in Bible College who had never memorized
even one Psalm, but had prayed five of them daily (he liked to pray
them out loud in his private prayer time) for over twenty
years. He could tell you everything in each one of them from
memory (but not word for word), and considered this practice to
be of the greatest benefit to him in his Christian life.

We spend an
hour a day either praying Psalms
that we have memorized and/or praying/memorizing new ones, in
which case we are praying them in an attitude of prayer while we are
memorizing. This can be done for any length of time.